2042:Return to Chaos
by SykoBeevr
Summary: Another post-Galatea? Yeah, ok, so what? At least it's a different year. The world's recovering, the Knight Sabers are disbanded...what could possibly go wrong?
1. Things That Go Bump in the Night

1  
Things That Go Bump in the Night  
  
2042. Much can change over the course of two years, but the years since the defeat of Galatea at the hands of the Knight Sabers held changes drastic by any measure. Fear of a repeat of the horrific "phenomenon" led to the immediate elimination of all boomers, even those few that had not gone mad. This left a tired populace relying on their wits and older machines to rebuild the shattered Tokyo, which was no small task. The job was slowly getting done, however, and some people were even managing to put the past out of their minds.  
With the removal of boomers, the Knight Sabers thought to continue on, focusing on more conventional threats to the public, but this did not last. For one, the ordeal had somehow changed Mackey Stingray, and he had become for all intents and purposes fully human. This instilled in Sylia the desire for a normal existence. The score had been settled with her doppelganger, and she finally had a true younger brother. The others had simply lost much of the desire to continue on with the team. The memories of that last battle were still fresh in their minds, and none wished to risk anything remotely similar.  
So Priss went to re-form her band, and fully pursued her musical career. Linna returned home in order to find some new purpose to dedicate herself to, and eventually settled into a peaceful life on her own near her parents. With the AD Police dissolved, Nene drifted between jobs at various computer and technology companies, ultimately offering her superior intellect and computer skills to the government as part of an intelligence- gathering and anti-hacking group.  
They all kept in contact, naturally, especially Nene and Mackey, but all were equally content to let the past alone. Sylia had the bulk of the Silky Doll building restored, though left the Pit, surprisingly well- preserved, untouched save to lock away the remnants of the hard suits, which she had no intention of ever using again. In short order, the Knight Sabers ceased to exist. Still, some things are not meant to fade away...  
Sylia was sleeping fitfully, disturbed by dreams that had been with her for the last two years: dream of boomers, of Galatea. Her eyes snapped open, and she immediately got up, and paused to listen. There was only silence. She could have sworn she'd just heard something, some distant noise like the thunder of an approaching storm. She jumped as someone knocked on her bedroom door.  
"Yes?" she called out quietly.  
"Sylia?" came Mackey's voice from the hall, "Can I come in?"  
She sighed, thinking perhaps she'd only heard his knocking. "Yes, Mackey, come in." The door slid open, and her brother, half-dressed, half- asleep shuffled in. "What is it Mackey? Trouble sleeping?"  
"Not really," he said with a somewhat curious tone, "I thought I heard a noise from downstairs. Did you hear anything?"  
Sylia quickly hid her concern, not wanting to alarm him. "A noise? No, I haven't heard anything. You probably dreamt it. You should get back to sleep."  
"I suppose you're right. Well, thanks. Goodnight, Sylia."  
"Goodnight, Mackey." She waited until she heard him get far enough down the hall, then slid her door open, and slipped out, heading the opposite way, toward the stairs down to the Silky Doll shop below. Now she was certain she had heard something. Something in her said it could not be a robber, they'd never had any after all, but she was not willing to discount anything. She got to the main floor, and took a look around, but found nothing amiss. "Strange," she muttered quietly. Deciding it was nothing, she returned to her room, and fell back into restless sleep.  
Far below her, in the Pit, a form disconnected itself from a wall, and once again certain it could work undetected, began to pound away at the floor. Each hit set off a minor explosive, which went chipping away slowly at the metal and cement. It still had a long way to go, but it was patient. It knew what it had to do, and above all, it knew how to do it right. There would be no mistakes this time. No, it realized. There never had been. Everything was going wonderfully. And now the time had almost come... 


	2. A Curious Night Out

2  
A Curious Night Out  
  
In the efforts to rebuild Tokyo, it was decided that the top priorities should be residential areas, to draw back the exiled citizens, and a fair-sized commercial district to provide some work, and enough diversion to prevent the drudging up of old, painful memories. Nene and Mackey had been spending the night flitting through various shops and stopping in here and there for little bits to eat rather than one solid meal.  
In between two such snacks, the young pair decided to simply walk without a destination, and talk without any sort of purpose. "So, Nene...how's life in the government?"  
"It's really not too different from my old job with the AD Police. I just keep an eye out for things, look through information, and try to keep myself from getting bored. The only real difference is that there are fewer people to work with, and no Leon-pea to bother." Mackey smiled faintly at the mention of her old co-worker, who at the moment was back with the normal police, and trying to maintain a usually-long-distance relationship with Priss, whose band had actually managed to start up a tour. Mackey never had much of a chance to get to know Leon, but Nene never had anything seriously bad to say about him, so Mackey was willing to think acceptingly of him.  
Mackey drew himself from his reflection when he noticed that Nene had stopped talking, and seemed rather withdrawn herself. "Nene? Are you feeling okay?"  
"What? Oh, yeah fine. It's just...I was just wondering..."  
"What?"  
"I was wondering if you feel any different, now that you're...well..."  
"Human?" Nene seemed a bit sullen at his blunt reminder that he had once been something between human and boomer, but he laughed lightly, and that pulled her gaze up to meet his eyes. "You don't need to worry about what I was. I've always been myself, even if certain parts have changed. You've known that from the start. 'Mackey is Mackey' you said. And that's true. Besides, I was always more human than boomer, like Galatea was more boomer than human, so there's really not that much that's been changed. Certainly there are some things that are different. I feel like my mind is working a bit slower than it used to...but it's ok. I'm glad I'm human now. Because now I can be more like what you want me to be."  
"Mackey..." He leaned in and gave her a light kiss on the cheek, which was lined with the trails of a few small tears. She smiled and hugged him tightly.  
Just then he noticed a group of about ten people gathered on the other side of the street. They didn't appear to be saying anything. They just stood there and looked at each other. Not knowing why, he realized that he was feeling almost unnaturally curious about them. His attention was riveted on something admittedly unusual, but overall mundane, and that began to disturb him. It almost reminded him of...No, that had to be his imagination. There was just something interestingly strange about them, that was all. Still, he could not deny that curiosity, that attraction...  
"...Mackey?" Nene's voice finally registered, though she had been trying to get his attention for a while. He could hear the fearful concern in her tone, and smiled at her in an attempt to ease her mind.  
"Sorry. I guess I was just absorbed by that group of people over there. Strange that they're not saying anything."  
"I suppose..." she sounded uncertain.  
"Anyway, what were you saying?"  
"I was saying that we should try to get Linna into the city again for a while, since it's been nearly a year since we've seen her. We probably couldn't get Priss, 'cause who knows when she'll be around now, but Linna at least should be able to make it."  
"You're right, that might be fun..."  
Later that night, as he was falling asleep, Mackey found that he could not help thinking about that group on the street. What had they been doing? Why couldn't he stop thinking about them? Those questions carried him off to sleep.  
Mere moments later, with nobody left awake, a faint pounding drifted up from the Pit...  
  
Next: Familiar Shadows... 


	3. Familiar Shadows

3  
Familiar Shadows  
  
It was a typically dull night. With the city primarily focused on rebuilding, there really were not too many troublemakers out and about. So Leon simply cruised along in his annoyingly standard-issue police car—he missed the one he and Daley used to have with the AD Police!—on his annoyingly boring patrol route growing, as always, increasingly annoyed at having been all but forced back into work for the standard police.  
"Someone could at least rob a convenience store or something," he mumbled. If only Daley had stayed on, he thought, the man could have kept him from boredom with some interesting conversation. But he was on his own now.  
"Leon, this is dispatch," the radio crackled to life.  
"What!" the building frustration spontaneously boiled out.  
"Touchy tonight, aren't we? Well, I suppose if you don't want to have a chance to get out of the car and do something..."  
"No, wait!"  
"I was going to anyway. We've gotten a couple of independent reports of some sort of disturbance in an old industrial area that hasn't been restored yet," a small point blinked onto his city map display then, "You're the closest, so you're on the job to check it out. Keep us informed."  
"Will do," he said with a smile creeping onto his face. With a flash of memory from the old days, he whipped the car around, and sped off to the indicated area. A short time later, he pulled up in front of an ominous- looking factory that still seemed to show remnants of having been affected by the "phenomenon".  
"I just love these places." His mind brought forth images of the fight against Galatea and a city full of mad boomers, of the Knight Sabers, of Priss...He shook his head, clearing the distractions. Pulling his gun, the only thing left over from his ADP years, he stalked across the eerily empty space before the factory. There was a sudden but quite shuffling noise behind him and to his right. He spun, bringing his gun up, body on full alert...and stopped when he saw a group of four civilians had been trying to quietly follow him.  
"Whoa hey," one shouted as he jumped back, "we're not the bad guys!" Leon lowered his gun and dropped his head, sighing with frustrated resignation.  
"Who are you?"  
"We all called in reports about a disturbance, then found each other and decided to stick around."  
"Well can you tell me any more about what might be going on, because I don't see anything out of place."  
"Sure, it's just that..." the man's words trailed off as a distant rumbling started to become more and more obvious. The ground around the factory started to shake violently then. Leon was about to tell the others to get down when a huge section of the ground in between him and the group simply erupted upwards.  
"Watch out!" he called over the noise. Then from the gaping hole crawled a massive light-blue colored creature. It seemed almost like an arthropod of some sort, but it was simply too huge. Then Leon remembered that he'd seen other like it. One had nearly defeated the Knight Sabers, and others like it had roamed Tokyo when the boomers took over. Apparently nobody had thought to look for the leftovers once reconstruction had started.  
"Over here!" he shouted at it, simultaneously firing off several rounds, hoping to draw its attention away from the civilians. He knew he had its focus, so he was surprised when he heard pained screams from the other side of the beast. He could not see past it, had no idea what was going on, but that only spurred him to a more fierce attack. Somewhere in his mind, Leon knew it was useless, but he had to try.  
His confusion only increased when he heard several small explosions and the monster simply fell over dead. Not wasting time wondering, he ran to the other side of hole to find the four civilians dead, their bodies brutally broken and bleeding. As if that was not enough, he was pushed to sheer disbelief when his car exploded. "What the--!"  
And there, silhouetted by the flames' light stood a shockingly familiar form. Details were obscured, but that outline...  
It was several hours later when Leon, exhausted, stumbled into the Silky Doll.  
"Leon-peon!" Nene called excitedly, then stopped short when she saw what bad shape he was in. Immediately she Sylia Mackey and Linna, who had managed to come into the city to visit for a bit, were around him, asking what was wrong. Needing rest, Leon led the way upstairs and dropped onto a couch, the others settling in with curious expressions. He took his time explaining about his orders and the creatures attack—that certainly drew some gasps and concerned looks from the girls—but then paused uncomfortably.  
"Has anyone been down to the Pit lately" he asked, looking directly at Sylia.  
"No," she responded firmly, "No one. I've had it closed off since we no longer need our hard suits or any of the equipment down there." Leon paused again, seeming thoughtful.  
"This is going to sound crazy, then...When I looked over to me car...I saw something there, and I think it was what killed the creature. And those people."  
"What was it?" Linna asked, riveted.  
"...I think it was Priss..."  
  
Next: A Mystery Close to Home 


End file.
